The Healthcare IT Value Model — A multidimensional healthcare IT planning and measurement tool for the HHS community

In the fast-evolving world of value-based contracts and coordinated care, providers need a strategic roadmap to guide them on the journey to true consumer-centered care by adopting smart technologies made for this new environment. Providers are asking hard questions: “What should I do next?” “How do I adopt the right IT strategy
that addresses all my clinical and operational workflows and processes?” “How can I work smarter to drive wellness for the individuals I serve while keeping costs down?”

To help health and human services organizations answer these questions, Netsmart launched the Healthcare IT Value Model, a vendor-agnostic planning and measurement system to help organizations chart their path on the HIT journey…and determine the value associated with those strategic decisions.

The model centers on five dimensions:

Providing Care – Delivering and documenting care given;

Informing Care – Bringing information to the professional – clinical, financial or operational – at the point of action;

Integrating Care – Creating a coordinated, integrated and comprehensive care process across all providers of care;

Accounting for Care – Managing claims, processing payments and generating revenue from intake to remittance; and

Engaging in Care – Empowering the person to participate directly in the care process.

The idea of using a structured model to drive change is not new. The physical healthcare industry adopted the HIMSS Electronic Medical Record Adoption model, which has driven physical care organizations to more rapidly adopt technology over the last two decades, and has resulted in strengthened workflows and more accessibility to meaningful data. The HIT Value Model should serve the same role in the health and human services community, helping organizations validate their IT investments and make the changes necessary to move successfully into the future.

To make the model work to its foremost capacity, organizations must first determine their goals based on a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic challenges and opportunities. Then, they should take the survey to score themselves and determine how well they are using healthcare IT to meet those goals. Organizations can then benchmark themselves against peer communities and facilities and use the information to determine next steps.